Quincy Jones was born on March 14, 1933, in Chicago’s South Side. He discovered his love for music in elementary school and experimented with nearly every instrument in his school band before choosing the trumpet. At just 18 years old, he earned a scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. Jones would go on to become one of the most influential figures in modern music—working as a producer, arranger, and composer across genres from jazz to pop, and helping shape the careers of artists like Michael Jackson.

Eli Whitney received a U.S. patent for the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized cotton processing by efficiently separating cotton fibers from seeds. While it boosted the Southern economy and solidified cotton as a dominant cash crop, the invention also drastically increased the demand for enslaved labor, intensifying the expansion of slavery across the American South.

William Jennings Jefferson was born in Lake Providence, Louisiana. In 1990, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first African American congressman from Louisiana since Charles Edmund Nash served during Reconstruction. Representing Louisiana’s 2nd District from 1991 to 2009, Jefferson’s election marked a significant milestone in the state’s political history.

The U.S. Army established its first training camp for Black officers in Des Moines, Iowa. This historic move came amid mounting pressure from African American leaders and communities demanding the right to serve in leadership roles during World War I. The Des Moines camp trained over 1,000 Black men, commissioning 639 as officers—the first large group of African Americans to achieve such status in the U.S. military. Their success marked a significant step forward in the fight for racial equality in the armed forces.

In response to the Pennsylvania Reform Convention of 1837, which denied Black men the right to vote, African Americans in Philadelphia held a large mass meeting on March 14, 1838. This gathering was a powerful act of political protest and civic engagement, demonstrating early organized resistance to voter suppression and systemic racism in the North.